Posted on 11/09/2025 9:23:33 PM PST by SeekAndFind
America has one of the world’s largest prison populations, with an estimated 1.7 million people in confinement.
Going further, America’s incarceration rate is the fourth-highest in the world. Despite being a developed economy, its prison population is more than double that of Russia, India, and Brazil combined.
This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows the countries with the most prisoners, based on data from the Prison Policy Initiative.
Below, we show the countries with the highest estimated prison population, with figures extrapolated from their most recent incarceration rates.
With nearly two million prisoners, China ranks first globally.
In China, many inmates are political prisoners, including Uyghur ethnic minorities. Since 2017, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been detained, along with their communities being subject to surveillance and forced labor.
America follows next, with incarceration rates of 614 per 100,000 people—more than three times higher than in China. This figure jumps significantly in southern states, with Louisiana’s standing at 1,067 per 100,000 people—second only to El Salvador in the world if it were considered a nation.
Ranking third is Brazil, with an estimated 664,000 inmates. The country’s prisons are notoriously overcrowded—some facilities in Rio de Janeiro operate at nearly 190% capacity. Russia also stands among the top five, with roughly 356,000 inmates, a country known for its highly corrupt justice system.
To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the cost per prisoner by U.S. state.
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A large share of America’s prison population consists of legal and illegal immigrants. In effect, we are importing criminals and then get slammed for imprisoning them.
El Salvador is #1, but that’s a good thing because it’s cleaning up the streets.
If we just gave them all the electric chair, we could bring that number down, quickly.
Still too low in the US. IDC what the per capita rate is when the crime rates are elevated
Some people shouldnt be there.
Some people who owe money shouldn’t, because in some cases jail is really debtors prisons and they can never get out because they have no ability to earn anything and pay off the debts. Divorced spouses owing child support are mainly this category of person.
Some others are people who have been under intense police pressure without a lawyer who falsely confess to crimes. Or who are at the wrong place at the wrong time and are falsely identified as being involved in a crime. Those who have had evidence planted in order for police to be able to arrest are also those who shouldn’t be there.
However I think people can also look at the number of people in jail numbers, as a reflection on how serious a society views the safety of its citizens, by keeping the most serious dangerous people locked away from civil people. It also is true that we have a lot of professional criminals that are responsible for multiple crimes again and again across their lifetimes, if we would deal with the violent ones like we used to, our crime numbers would drop sharply and stay down for a good while. If we eliminated just the worst 3% of violent/murderer offenders permanently, the violent crime/murder stats would go down over 60%. Thats how much crime is committed by a small repeat offender subset.
We also have the fourth largest population do we not? Think critically
If we just gave them all the electric chair, we could bring that number down, quickly.
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You’re not the brightest bulb on the tree.
To which I’d add: Our justice system is usually too lenient on “beginning” offenders.
Probation, probation, probation. Then we are all surprised when the offender learns nothing, and graduates to bigger crimes.
Perhaps the “broken windows” theory should be applied to sentencing.
Side note: I’m not advocating that “beginning” offenders be sent to Alcatraz. A month at a prison farm might due the trick.
World population:
China,
India,
The US
Malaysia
So despite being the third largest population, we only have the fourth largest incarceration rate. Not bad.
Gee - I’m surprised that North Korea isn’t on the list!
Charlie Kirk did a video showing his last trip to South Korea. Left all of his luggage on the sidewalk outside a store unsupervised and went site-seeing for four hours. It was all still there. His host said it would be fine - it is not in S. Korea’s culture to steal, rob or murder. Obviously it isn’t zero.
Japan too probably has a similar culture.
Some of these countries (like Indonesia and the Phillipines maybe??) might have very strict rules and punishments which dissuade criminal behavior. I wonder which countries have swift executions? “Oh yes, we have a very low prison population. Very good!”
Also some places have less in prison because they just execute them much more often than we do now. If we got rid of all chronic serial violent/murderous criminals, our crime stats would drop greatly, because the dirty secret is a large majority of crimes are committed by a small subset of career criminals we simply won’t just take care of once and for all.
Well also we are too lenient on female criminals as well. They get on average only about 1/3 the sentence a man would get for what they did. If they even get prison time at all.
Ours is because of drug laws.
“A large share of America’s prison population consists of legal and illegal immigrants. In effect, we are importing criminals and then get slammed for imprisoning them”
“The 2023 native-born American incarceration rate of 1,221 per 100,000 natives is the highest of the three groups analyzed. Legal immigrants have the lowest incarceration rate at 319 per 100,000 legal immigrants in 2023. Illegal immigrants have an incarceration rate of 613 per 100,000 illegal immigrants, higher than legal immigrants but also lower than native-born Americans.”
Nah native born dindus make up a much larger percentage and total numbers. It’s racist to point out the race break down of prison populations but it’s them boo boo always thEmirates.
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/illegal-immigrant-incarceration-rates-2010-2023
I’ll take “What is the population of North Korea?” for a thousand, Alex!
https://www.fairus.org/sites/default/files/2019-01/SCAAP-Data-Illegal-Aliens-Have-Higher-Crime-Rate_0.pdf
True
The USA also happens to have the largest concentration of filthy scumbag urban ghetto democrats. Now you know the rest of the story.
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